For the past 23 years, Pantone’s Colour of the Year has influenced product development and purchasing decisions in multiple industries, including fashion, home furnishings, and industrial design, as well as product packaging and graphic design.
The Pantone Colour of the Year selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. To arrive at the selection each year, Pantone’s colour experts at Pantone Colour Institute comb the world looking for new colour influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, popular travel destinations, as well as new lifestyles, and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures, and effects that impact colour, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention
Pantone has revealed its Color of the Year for 2022; 17-3938 Very Peri, a brand new color "whose courageous presence encourages personal inventiveness and creativity". The shade falls under the blue color family but with violet red undertones, illustrating the fusion of our modern times and how the digital world has morphed with our physical one. In architecture, shades of periwinkle blue and lavender have long been used in installations, commercial spaces, and lighting, instilling an overall calming, optimistic, and positive effect on the human mind.
We are living in transformative times. PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri is a symbol of the global zeitgeist of the moment and the transition we are going through. As we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. Digital design helps us to stretch the limits of reality, opening the door to a dynamic virtual world where we can explore and create new color possibilities. With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how color trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.
“The Pantone Color of the Year reflects what is taking place in our global culture, expressing what people are looking for that color can hope to answer.” said Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute. “Creating a new color for the first time in the history of our Pantone Color of the Year educational color program reflects the global innovation and transformation taking place. As society continues to recognize color as a critical form of communication, and a way to express and affect ideas and emotions and engage and connect, the complexity of this new red violet infused blue hue highlights the expansive possibilities that lay before us”.
Fittingly for a color inspired by our more seamless movement between physical and digital realms, Very Peri can serve a transitional purpose both within the home and in one’s own approach to designing with color, while functioning brilliantly across an array of textures and finishes.
“For those who are gun-shy about using too much color and taking that first step, it’s a great color to use maybe just on one wall instead of all four walls,” notes Eiseman. The shade, she suggests, will help designers turn up the volume in transitional spaces too: “Perhaps in an entry area, in a hallway where you’re leading from one space to the other and you want to add some extra excitement to it and you don’t want the same old taupe gray, you [can] add a little more jazz to the area.”
In architecture, shades of periwinkle blue and lavender have long been used in installations, commercial spaces, and lighting, instilling an overall calming, optimistic, and positive effect on the human mind.
Aside from being a tone used in the high-contrast games popular among Gen Z, the shade also has roots in the natural world and in wellness, with lilac, lavender, and periwinkle plants offering a calming sense during a chaotic time. Very Peri also appears in a lot of beauty and fashion trend forecasts—Pantone’s official presentation of the color includes looks from Lanvin, Chet Lo, and Louis Vuitton men’s.
In 2021, the company was inspired by a new vertical: technology. From NFTs and space shuttle joyrides to Mark Zuckerberg's promise of the metaverse, the year was characterized by our increasing reliance on automation and the digital realm . Very Peri reflects the increasingly blurry boundary between our physical and digital worlds. In fact, the Pantone Color Institute realized that such an unprecedented time called for the introduction of a completely new color rather than one pulled from the massive brand’s extensive palette. “We just needed to open our minds to a new vision, so I think part of that was realizing [that] maybe we have to transform our process as well,” Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute.
Not only was this color freshly created for the announcement, but Pantone has announced that it will now launch the first official NFTs from the brand. Powered by the Tezos blockchain with art created by Polygon1993, each piece was inspired by the beloved color of the year.
Together, the partners will offer artworks inspired by PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri. So fans and collectors can look forward to the digital representation of the color and the message it embodies.
So the end goal is to showcase inventiveness, creativity and new ways of thinking about color.
It is worth reiterating that PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri is “a symbol of the global zeitgeist of the moment and the transition we are going through.” In a way, the Pantone X Tezos initiative illustrates the fusion of modern life. That is, how color trends in the digital world affect the physical world and vice versa.
